Field of the Invention
The invention relates to recovering component elements from compounds of two or more elements. In particular, this invention provides electrolytic methods for recycling compound semiconductors.
Background Information
Cadmium telluride (CdTe) is a compound semiconductor which has become the dominant material in thin film photovoltaic solar technology. The component element cadmium is highly toxic. This property and the scarcity of the other component element, tellurium, have raised concerns about broad-scale deployment of CdTe-based devices. Substitution by zinc telluride, proposed as a possible replacement for CdTe, would circumvent the potential public health hazard of CdTe but not address vulnerability to limitations on the rate of tellurium production. Mandatory recycling could mitigate both these concerns, but recycling technologies known for CdTe involve multiple steps and ultimately produce a mixed-metal product that must be still further refined in order to recover component elements in usable form. There is, accordingly, a need for a technique that will recover component elements of a compound in usable forms simultaneously.